Women in Healthcare Q&A: Phoebe L. Yang, Providence St. Joseph Health Board Director
We had a chance to sit down with Phoebe Yang, who is a Board Director at Providence St. Joseph Health, to learn more about her career path, and the advice she has for women working in the healthcare industry.
As another great resource for advice, Phoebe also gave a presentation at Providence, where she shared insight about her career and what she learned along the way:
What excites you about this industry?
Having spent 15 years in the media and communications industries, I believe that working in health care is not merely a job — it is a calling to serve and to fulfill a higher mission to bring health and healing to our world.
My excitement about the industry — especially now — is that anyone with a deep sense of that mission and the willingness to roll up her sleeves and apply her talents to solve the real challenges in achieving our best health for our communities, for our families, and for ourselves, can have a tremendous impact. The traditional industry ladders of advancement are diminishing, and the emergence of opportunities for new talent and new leadership, who are excited and not threatened by transformation, is tremendous. We are at an inflection point in the history of this country, and one thing seems increasingly clear — the industry that has largely existed over the last 100 years will look dramatically different in the next twenty years, even possibly the next ten. What it will be in the future is up to those of us who are not willing to idly watch the devolution of an old rubric but who embrace our enduring mission — which dates back 400 years ago — to transform and create new rubrics for health and healing in our world well into the coming 100, 200, even 400 years going forward.
Who have been your biggest influences? How did they affect the work you do today? How did they shape your career path?
I have had many wonderful bosses, sponsors, mentors, and friends. However, the biggest influences have been my father and my Brother.
From my late father, who, as an immigrant, was one of the first non-black professors at an HBCU in Arkansas and a keen economist and statistician, I have learned that being an “outsider” can be difficult but can also be an advantage, if we embrace our wider vantage point for the good of others. I have learned that economics underlies much of human politics and social behavior. I have learned that one should never look down on another’s job or station — as he used to say, “Everyone has to make a living.” I have learned to strive for modesty and eschew pretension. I have learned that serving others brings lasting joy. I have learned that working hard is more important than being smart, and positioning is not as important as direction. I have learned not to dwell on “the lagging indicators of success” (what you did or accomplished before) but to focus on “the leading indicators of success” (what values, hard work, and kindness you take into your work going forward). I have learned that people are more important than projects or money or things. And I have learned that we must not wait to enjoy the people God has placed in our lives, because the clocks of life continue to tick without waiting for us to finish whatever we think is more important.
In the person of Jesus, I have learned that leadership is an act of stewardship, not an act of control or power. I have learned that giving my utmost and striving for excellence should be an act of worship, not an act of pride. I have learned that sometimes those in positions of leadership or authority — including myself — can miss the main point. I have learned that those on the margins or who sit “below” are always worth paying attention to and may have the greatest insights of all. I have learned that the best paths are often not the easy ones. I have learned that there is such thing as truth, and ignoring it can be dangerous. I have learned that transformation is a gift borne out of love, truth, courage, and wisdom. I have learned to hold things lightly in order to embrace the grander things in store. I have learned to honor those given the responsibility of leadership. Where I am asked to overlook or do something against my conscience, I have learned that there is yet a Higher Authority who cares and to whom I am accountable. I have learned that being a student is more important than being an expert. I have learned that rest is an imperative for success. I have learned that all are created in God’s image and intended to receive the gifts of life, healing, and love. And I have learned that listening to the “still small voice” and having passion about what that voice calls us to do — whatever the particular moment or setting — is a greatest predictor of fulfillment and ultimate success in work and in life.
If you had one piece of advice for women in the workforce today, what would it be?
What defines your core — your very essence — is both formed and revealed in those unseen moments, when no one else is looking, when you are faced with a choice: a choice to do what is good over what is easy. There are many opportunities throughout one’s day to choose easy over good — to mask the real problem rather than go to the root cause, to hide the ball rather than to invite community, to control rather than to empower, to “fudge” rather than to clarify, to criticize rather than to find a path forward, to undermine rather than to uplift, to abuse rather than to honor, to overlook rather than to stand with, to throttle down rather than to be passionate, to cut corners rather than to insist on excellence.
My experience has been that what you choose in each of those unseen moments collectively forms the person you are, and when you choose what is good over what is easy, people will notice, but, more importantly, you will notice and you will have greater confidence in who you are and the value you bring to what you do. When you choose good over easy, you will find meaning, and that meaning will fuel success on a multitude of planes — professionally, relationally, personally, spiritually. And over time, you will also discover that the character of the person you are cannot be taken away from you, and you will likely come to believe that the core of who you are is perhaps your most valuable success of all.
What’s your greatest success story?
Perhaps not unlike great athletes, we each have individual success stories that may reveal our talents and abilities; however, like all great quarterbacks or point guards or coaches, I think the greatest stories are not just my stories — perhaps that’s what makes them great.
One of my favorite professional successes took place when I was working for one of the world’s largest media companies, and we were preparing to be publicly traded. Perhaps the biggest challenge for the company was an underperforming asset — the health enterprises business — that was the worst performing asset across all divisions and markets. It had lost $60-$100 million every year in the ten years since its inception. Since the President of that business had recently been hired out of a different industry by a previous CEO, his matrixed team from ad sales, finance, production, programming, operations, affiliate relations, and others were hesitant about engaging him in a plan to salvage the declining media business whose model had been structurally flawed well before he had arrived. Upon reflection, that business was in an untenable situation with an impending event . . . which does not sound dissimilar to what the health care industry is facing today.
Anyway, the President of the business and I had a good relationship, and he possessed a rare type of humble leadership such that he entrusted his team to me, allowing me to lead a series of meetings and initiatives, behind closed doors, to hammer out a detailed plan to get to profitability within eight months. The plan we devised was extremely aggressive and certainly full of risks, but it required each player come to the table willing to put aside “protecting their hides” and to “put skin in the game” to risk their own performance margins to create unprecedented goals for achieving new ratings targets, resetting ad sales rate cards, repositioning the brand, revisiting financial investments, changing programming line-ups, shortening production timeframes, and cutting all non-essential costs. Once everyone realized that the future of our business (and likely our jobs) depended on creating a new path forward, we designed and executed a gameplan to achieve commercial sustainability. We came together as a tight team and, with focused execution, we were able to achieve what had eluded the company for a decade — profitability within eight months to a run rate of approximately $10 million for that year. And although the President of the business credited me as the “master architect” behind the work, it only happened because the team came together, faced reality, recognized our interdependence, found what they liked and trusted in each other, and paved the path forward.
What about your greatest failure or struggle? How has that changed or shaped you?
If most of us are honest, we have had plenty of learning opportunities from our struggles and failures — I am no exception. Yet, there is one struggle and failure for me that stands out as undoubtedly the greatest. I was a recent law school graduate, clerking for a federal judge in San Francisco. During that year, my single parent father — at age 56 — was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer. While I returned home every month to visit him, I felt during each visit that I deeply wanted to return home more permanently to care for him. I was miserable, as I struggled whether to follow my heart and return home or to honor his admonition not to do so, as he replayed a comment I had made early on during the clerkship, “People don’t quit judicial clerkships without it damaging their careers.” I didn’t know how to explain to him that this was different or that it didn’t matter when it came to him.
Four months after my father was diagnosed, I left my father’s side on a Monday to catch a flight and determined to give my notice that week. On Thursday, I let my boss know that I would see him through the following set of cases, but that I needed to return home permanently the next month to care for and be with my father. However, about 43 hours after my conversation with my boss, my father passed away early on Saturday morning. It was a valuable lesson to me that when it comes to time and relationships, one must not allow what one deems to be important to override the things that are truly irreplaceable. I have learned that work is a vocational call to live and enable others to live in right relationship with God, humankind, and creation; it is derivative of and, in its ideal form, supportive of those relationships, whether they are relationships with the Divine, with the familial, with colleagues, or with the known or unknown impoverished we serve. However, work is never a replacement for them.
My coming into health care is both inspired and fueled by the memory of my father’s experience with a common terminal illness that went undiagnosed for three years — despite his repeated pleas to the medical system to uncover what was wrong. That should not happen in this country at this point in history. And I have learned on a personal level that we must always value the person more than the project.
What strengths can women bring into this industry?
Women are the largest purchaser of healthcare services — whether for themselves, their children, their parents, or others. In an industry that is still largely run by men at the top, those organizations that bring women into the fore will have a much greater chance at cultivating the trusted relationships with the healthcare consumer that are critical to success going forward. I have witnessed more than one task force or executive committee whose mandate is to build a consumer brand or business, with not a single woman or ethnic minority member of that task force or executive committee. Understanding what the consumer needs, wants, and values will depend on not just reading surveys and projecting behavior, but on incorporating the very perspectives we claim to want to serve into our own decision making bodies. In my experience, women are often more inclined to invite and embrace other perspectives, perhaps because they have experienced the failings of systems that did not. It stands to reason that the most successful health care organizations will be the ones that create their competitive advantage by recognizing the imperative of tapping the insight and purchasing power of women as they build and offer their products and services.
Providence-St. Joseph Health has an enviable competitive advantage as an organization started by women over 140 years ago and as one that today has a higher percentage of women leaders and a higher percentage of women professionals in technology, finance, and other disciplines traditionally dominated by men. This will be a critical ingredient to our success as we seek to transform not only ourselves but an entire industry in pursuit of our enduring mission to bring “Health for a better world.”
